Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Tuesday Roundup

Some favorites and very few duds from Tuesday's commenting (all links function in Firefox):

Favorites, in no particular order:

I chuckled at this clever joke from SavetoFavorites in the Wake Up Deadspin post. We don't talk a whole lot about SavetoFavorites, but he's a one-liner guy who generally operates with a high degree of difficulty. One-liners, in my opinion, are a more sophisticated type of joke than, say, a standard recontextualization; a good one-liner requires very deliberate, very elegant structure and a rock-solid punchline. SavetoFavorites is a very good architect of one-liners.

I really enjoyed IronMikeGallego's hilarious photo caption in the Colin Cowherd post. Photo caption jokes seem to be gaining a degree of popularity, and I'm all for that, if for no other reason than that they sort of expand the material that's available for humor in a given post and open up different joke structures.

This joke, from Steve_U, is more of an observation than a caption, but it functions in much the same way, and is excellent. I giggled quite a bit at this. Later, he left a fantastic O.J. Simpson joke in the Broken Trophy post (find it yourself, lousy ingrate), earning a round of +1s. Here, have another. That's terrific.

Frustratingly-infrequent commenter Sheed's Bald Spot cracked me up with this contribution to the Horrifying Manbaby post.

Also from the Horrifying Manbaby post, this sharp offering from Delonte, Interrupted earned a couple of +1s. That's a great pull.

Eddie Murray Sparkles went on a tear today. This dazzling Kennedys joke in the Pittsburgh Bar post was one of the day's best. Later, he made pouring through the (mostly terrible) Funbag post worthwhile with this magnificent pull, also one of the day's very best jokes. And finally, I have to admit I laughed and laughed at his Delta Burke joke in the Broken Trophy post (it's worth searching for it yourself. Links to slideshow posts don't work, for whatever reason). What a day.

And finally, two more from the Broken Trophy post: look for Same Sad Echo's awesome U.S. Treasury joke (which caused me to laugh aloud), and fat-leaveher's wonderfully clever AA joke. Nice work.

Total Fucking Duds

Not too many duds today. I didn't bother culling duds from the Funbag - there are just too many. I will point out that someone called chiachera was approved by someone called thePrototype so that a video could be posted as a reply to the original non-joke.This is mind-boggling, but not worth getting into again.

Unstarred commenter jackc contributed this thing to the West Ham United post. That it's not funny really ought to go without saying, but it also provides an opportunity to address something else that bugs me: is it so hard to observe the rules of capitalization and punctuation? Seriously, it can't have taken more than 15 seconds to type that thing out - go ahead and spend the extra 4 seconds to make it conform to standards of the English language. In all the time I've been reading Deadspin, I don't think I've ever seen a knock-out joke delivered in sloppy lower-case, and I'm sure it has something to do with taking a little pride in your contributions.

Unstarred commenter Shot_From_The_Musket missed the mark with this joke in the Pittsburgh Bar post. I'm sure SFTM had an idea for a joke there, and it probably could be pretty funny. This is one of those comments that just screams out for a little more finesse, for the extra minute or two of care in packaging the punchline. Is that the best, most impactful, funniest way to deliver your joke? Probably not.

And finally, our Duddest Dud of the Day goes to Desi Relaford, for this brutally lazy joke in the Hines Ward post. You've got to be kidding me. The James Harrison was fined for it thing has been worked over again and again, but unbelievably, there's still a little juice in it. As with any meme or standard joke type, the funny is not in the meme itself, but in the careful, considered, skillful use of it. This is just about the most blunt and heavy-handed delivery possible. No, in fact, it is the most blunt, careless, humorless presentation I can come up with. There is no cheaper delivery of that meme.

Awesome work, as usual. Just want to say that MBA is especially great this week, when I'm working crazy hours. No chance to catch up on all the comments but it's great being able to check out the best of the best (and the worst of the worst). Bless you wonderful people.